jhb171achill

Glad you asked, Minister, and you've done me a favour while you're at it. First, the model was made by the late "Monty" Montgomery of Bray, a friend of my father's. He would have passed away in the 1960s. I remember visiting him on a number of occasions. He had a truly amazing collection of 5 inch & 3.5 inch gauge models of various Irish locomotives, including this one and one of "Maedb". I am unsure of whether he had never married, or whether he was widowed, as there was nobody else (evident, at any rate) in the house when we would visit. All of his models - and I reckon there must have been 15 or 20 - were fully operational live steam locomotives with the exception of Nos. 36 and 800, whish he was unable to finish due to failing eyesight and dexterity - the sort of things that go with a condition known as "too many birthdays"! He had obtained the drawings directly from my grandfather in Inchicore's Drawing Office, which is how he knew my family. He built all of his models directly off the original plans, or in the case of 36 fro measurements of the real thing. The tender was still extant when he started the model of 36. As Monty aged, he gave them all to my father, but he took the view that they deserved to be seen by a wider audience, so he arranged for the Belfast Transport Museum to take them, as nobody in any museum organisation Dublin had the slightest interest. I am unsure whether he offered them to the IRRS at the time, but they too would not have had the room to store, let alone display them. So they ended up in Witham Street, where most of them went on display for a number of years. Once the move to Cultra took place, they went into storage again. I am unsure of the current position, but as models they put just about everything else that anyone has ever made into the ha-penny place - they are utterly superb down to the last detail, and all bar the two unfinished ones fully live-steam operational. Now, Minister - I said you did me a favour. You've triggered something in my mind about where the photos are of these locos. This has made me realise that the several hundred pics of my father and grandfather's which I have been posting here the odd time when the whim takes me, are NOT the whole lot - as I remember my father taking pictures of ALL Monty's models, not just the two I've shown. So this begged the question where are the other photos? And that, in turn, begged the question where are the photos he took of the Portadown - Armagh line being lifted? I can't find them. So a search started this morning. I have yet to uncover the aforementioned, which will continue to niggle at my mind until I find them - but what I DID uncover instead was a brown envelope. No, not Northern Bank tenners (I keep them in the second drawer in the freezer), but a pile of old negatives which I was unaware of. I thought they were duplicates of other stuff I have but lo and behold, they are not. So I will bring them to "my man" in the coming days and get them scanned. They are very old - there's a series of a loco being fished out of a river bed in Wexford during the "Troubles" and there's an old 2.2.2 of some sort, so they must be my grandfather's. So, there's your answer; customarily long-winded, of course, but it answers your question! And yes, the whole of 36, not just the tender, did indeed come within a whisker of being scrapped. Of the two D & KR coaches which survived with it, one was scrapped and the other is in Cultra.

CIE didn't have a monopoly on filthy steam locos! This Jeep is still in traffic in 1969 here, but interestingly its number plates have been taken off (wonder who has them!) and a crude "NIR" has been "applied by hand" to the tank sides! Not sure which one; it's fifty-something, by the look of the buffer beam. (H C A Beaumont)

jhb171Senior was in Porteeedown, as 800 passed at snail's pace in the company of the ex-MGWR Dargan Saloon towards the erstwhile Belfast Transport Museum in the early 1960s.

OUTSTANDING stuff, Raymond.

Wouldn't be the first time the rules were broken - though that one would have carried with it a VERY high risk of a low-speed derailment! Senior saw this back in 1952 or 3 - No. 100 with the goods which was then typically operating once or twice a week. he said it was "threading its way carefully through the weeds" - and that's with three open wagons and No. 5J - the sole remaining T & CLR goods brake van! .... I wonder if it was the same driver! That's Senior's car on the left - a 1951 light green Ford Prefect. He had it until about 1965 by which time - even then - it looked like an antique. I went to school in that - ZL 4196. And a few bits of oul hardware. This lot would get nice auction prices today!

Something a little bit different - my own photos of the Ardara BnM system, back in the day; I believe this was about 1995. . No. 36: It's there now, and it was there back in the early 1960s when this was taken! The green it's in here is probably more accurate for pre-1875 GSWR green than what it's in nowadays. And a FIVE INCH gauge version of it. Any guesses? It was made in the 1940s, and it was not made by Cyril Fry!

The line speed limit was 7 to 10 miles an hour! The timetable allowed twenty minutes for the three mile run between Courtmac and Timoleague!

I'd be afraid I'd end up arguing with trumpists, anti-vaxxers and other random conspiracy wackos!

I'm seeing that several of the above posts come from Twitter. I have up until now studiously avoided going anywhere near twitter; those on it might comment on the extent to which it is of any use in terms of railway interest? Is it just a duplicated version of interweb stuff? Or is there more to see? I see the IRRS is on it - I wasn't aware of that.

Good dream, though!

Can you IMAGINE!!! Agreed totally!

Do you mean in real life? Downpattick has three locomotives, of which two are in working order. The RPSI has about ten, of which I think three are currently in working order. The Cavan & Leitrim have two, with one in w/o. Over the years, between the three, typically anything from 4 to 7 steam engines are operable.

They are, yes, agreed - though I'm afraid it's more than the odd error! He got to many places that other enthusiasts didn't and seems to have a special interest in the innards of signal cabins and their staff. That alone is gold dust - not many others thought of that. He was a very nice man to talk to.

Wonder what they mean by “616” vans? Probably 61ft 6ins….!!! The National Library’s categorisation of O’Dea’s pictures is riddled with mis-spellings, misinterpretations and numerous straightforward errors!

I don't believe so, I think it's safe to say no. There weren't that many of them and the livery wasn't that long in existence; they were eventually repainted in blue & grey with "bumblebee" stripes.

But on a happier, if more dieseley note: (All pics H C A Beaumont)

For our more northerly members: Maysfields, first, mid 60s.

I was in the cab of an 071 on the Cork line about 1979 and he was delayed leaving, then held at a signal somewhere near Kildare, making him ten minutes down overall. Begad, he threw the anchor and parachutes away after that (about 8 or 9 Mk 2s and genny van behind), and on what they driver referred to as “the racetrack” between Templemore & Thurles he was doing 84…. I think, though stand to be corrected, that the line limit there was 70….

If you’re looking at GNR stuff on the GSWR, the best bets are the 100 cement vans - like CIE “H” vans only with corrugated ends a bit like many British goods vans. Then you’ve the German diesel, K801, which operated for a while on the Cobh line. While as I said before I’ve no particular recollection of seeing a photo of an ex-GNR coach on the main line, and I never saw one myself, that’s not to say that a K15 or something like that never made such a trip. It’s your layout - and a green K15 may possibly appear at Dugort Harbour! Model the DSER in the 60s and GNR stock is common…. For the GSWR in that era, though, laminates, Bredins, Cravens & the more modern wooden GSWR corridor stock are the only show in town.

Somewhere in that area, I think. He used to stay near Clonea on holiday.

Looks superb - love it. Those were the days when track was well looked after and there were no graffiti merchants!

They mostly stayed on their old haunts at first, though one wooden coach ended up briefly on the Loughrea branch of all places, and another ended up even further afield - West Cork. In both cases their stays were brief, and both were old wooden ones thus brown - no wooden panelled GNR coaches ever got the blue and cream livery except No. 50, the Director's Saloon. By the time they started straying beyond home territory they had typically been repainted green. At least one - 114 (brake 3rd) remained in blue and cream until (I think) 1967, as (I think) the last GNR coach to remain in GNR livery in use. But I think it stayed on the GN section. Once CIE took over the GNR remains in the south, because they were based in Amiens Street, the first (and in most cases ONLY) place on CIE where GNR locos, railcars and coaches would have been seen was the DSER. They don't seem to have penetrated the MGWR much, and the GSW hardly at all. I have never seen any evidence of a single blue and cream coach venturing onto the GSWR or MGWR sections - though it could well have happened. Such an instance, I reckon, would have been rare if it happened at all; over years and years of voraciously trawling any photos I can ever see, I have yet to see one example of it. Within a short few years, anything GNR which ended up on CIE was repainted green, and from 1963 on, black'n'tan. The UTA tended to keep some stock in GNR blue and cream a little longer; examples were still to be seen until maybe 1964 or so - my solitary recollection of a GNR coach in GNR livery was a brown one in Lisburn around 1964 (though I cannot be certain of the date). Several GNR & BUT railcars remained in blue and cream for a while, albeit with the letters "G N R" painted over, and a UTA crest substituted for the GNR one. Nothing "clueless" about your good self, murphaph! Yes, just a delay. All three were in CIE stock. If 136 had been UTA property, it would have had an "N" stuck in front of the number. It is likely that it had been fairly recently painted when CIE took over, so a few years later it's still wearing its GNR clothes. Meanwhile, one of the two in the distance has been repainted between 1958 and 1962 (green) while the other has just been repainted more recently - after December 1962 / early '63 - in black'n'tan.

Would have been very nice and very scenic, but there's nothing up there which would have made a railway line even close to being economically viable, unfortunately. Given the topography it would have cost a fortune to build, too, and would probably have needed quite powerful engines to deal with very severe gradients!

Surrounded by some great reading material!